Advertisement

Advertisement

Rampaging Hurricanes roll past Reds

They gave the Hurricanes a scare but the Reds have fallen to their fifth straight loss, going down 34-15 at Suncorp Stadium.

In was a helter skelter affair that thrilled the 17,439 fans at Suncorp Stadium and in fairness to the Reds, they were markedly better than they were in their two-week road trip.

They turned what was shaping as a nightmare on Castlemaine Street into a one-try contest for the majority of the night - albeit against a Hurricanes team that was falling over their own feet.Scott Higginbotham was undoubtedly the best player in a red jersey, setting up one try, scoring another and securing a critical turnover after the Reds defended their own line for seven minutes.

But the Hurricanes are a lean, mean, try-scoring machine that thrives on loose play and they got plenty of that tonight.

For all their improvements, the Reds were weak defensively in the second term and that is not an option if you hope to succeed against the Canes.

What could only be described as a bizarre game of football was kicked off by complete Hurricanes dominance in the opening quarter, so much so that it looked as though they were in the middle of a training run.

The home side held on despite consistently poor line speed but after 15 minutes, the Canes had their first points.

A double cutout from Jordie Barrett found Brad Shields, who put Julian Savea one-on-one with Jake McIntyre five metres out, which went as one would expect.It looked as though things could get mighty ugly when McIntyre threw an inside ball that was picked off by TJ Perenara as if he had been in the team meetings at Ballymore all week.

He streaked away to score and it was 14-0 as the clock ticked past 20 minutes.

McIntyre looked to have given away another try through another misguided pass in the 24th minute but after TMO intervention, Ngani Laumape was sent to the bin.

Queensland grew an extra leg with the one man advantage and put together a pair of sublime tries - the second a candidate for try of the year.Karmichael Hunt and Higginbotham set Chris Kuridrani up for the first five pointer as both slipped some neat offloads to put the winger over.

Higginbotham then went as close as humanly possible to registering a try and try assist in the one movement for Queensland's second try of the night.

The Number 8 charged through a hole set up by Taniela Tupou before flicking a Quade Cooper-esque ball to Nabuli before regathering his feet and receiving the final pass to score under the posts.

The Canes opened up a converted try lead early in the second term when Ardie Savea blew straight past McIntyre in space before offloading to Vince Aso for the easiest try he will score this season.

That was followed by a trio of Canes tries that were disallowed, each having been awarded by referee Angus Gardner before being called back.

The Reds threatened to level the scores with some endeavour in attack but the Canes stayed water tight before launching their final assault.

Chris Kuridrani rushed out of the line and allowed Jordie Barrett to slice through the line for the sealer at the 73 minute mark, his brother Beauden scoring the final try of the night one minute before the final siren sounded.